Biblical names and their meanings
Biblical names can carry a sense, identify a person or become the name of a people. Those uses need different checks.
Last updated October 15, 2026
Contents10
- Biblical names: browse the reference
- How biblical names are compared
- Identify the bearer before using a biography
- Narrative wordplay and dictionary origin
- Aliases and English edition differences
- What a name can and cannot tell you
- A short worksheet for a name study
- FAQ
- Continue this study
- Verdict: biblical names with evidence
Biblical names can carry a sense, identify a person or become the name of a people. Those uses need different checks. Isaac's laughter belongs to his birth story. Israel can refer to Jacob, his descendants or the northern kingdom. A short meaning does not settle which person or group a verse has in view.
A biblical name gloss is a source's brief explanation of a name. A bearer is the person who has it in a passage. Keep those two records apart. Start with the name below, compare the attributed readings, then use the cited family or office to identify the bearer. Related spellings help with a search; they do not prove that two people are the same.
Biblical names: browse the reference
These entries cover the names listed here. They are a selected reference, rather than an inventory of every personal name in Scripture. Each link opens an explanation with historical dictionary readings and named passage evidence. The text remains available when filtering is off.
| Name | Language | Attributed gloss | Passages for identifying bearers | Aliases | Reading note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andrew | Greek | Manly; manliness; a strong man | Matthew 4:18-20; John 1:40-42 | Andrew; Andrey | A Greek given name in a Jewish Gospel setting. The fishing scene identifies Andrew as Simon's brother; the other passage follows his meeting with Jesus. Neither source supplies a modern family's surname history. |
| Elijah | Hebrew | My God is Yahweh; whose God is Jehovah | 1 Kings 17:1-4; 18:36-39 | Elijah; Elias | A name with a divine-name element. Elijah's appeal at Carmel gives a narrative setting for the confession. Elias can be a useful KJV lookup form, but the surrounding sentence must identify the prophet. |
| Gabriel | Hebrew | God is my strength; champion of God; man of God | Daniel 8:15-17; Luke 1:18-20, 26-31 | Gabriel | The selected sources differ in how they express the name. Gabriel carries messages to distinct recipients. A name table should preserve those recipients, rather than blending the scenes into a general claim about angel ranks. |
| Isaac | Hebrew | Laughter | Genesis 17:17-19; 18:12-15; 21:3-7 | Isaac | The naming is tied to laughter before and after a birth. Who laughs and when matters. The same gloss can sit beside doubt in one scene and joy in another, so the narrative adds more than a single emotion label. |
| Isaiah | Hebrew | Salvation of Yahweh; salvation of Jehovah | Isaiah 1:1-3; 6:1-8 | Isaiah; Esaias | A father's name helps distinguish the prophet: Isaiah is son of Amoz. The related spelling Esaias helps find some KJV references. Neither spelling settles questions about the composition or dating of the whole book. |
| Israel | Hebrew | Striving or prevailing with God; historical prince readings | Genesis 32:24-30; 35:9-12; 1 Kings 12:16-20 | Israel; Jacob | This record moves from a person's new name to later collective uses. In a sentence that contrasts Israel and Judah, a kingdom may be meant. It would be a mistake to read every occurrence as a direct reference to modern politics. |
| Jacob | Hebrew | Heel; supplanter | Genesis 25:24-26; 27:34-36; 32:27-29 | Jacob; Israel | A birth detail and a later complaint use the name differently. Esau's charge is a character's speech within a conflict. It should not be turned into an unqualified dictionary verdict about everyone named Jacob. |
| Jeremiah | Hebrew | Exaltation of the Lord; raised up or appointed by Jehovah | Jeremiah 1:1-8; 1 Chronicles 12 | Jeremiah; Jeremias | The prophet and the men in Chronicles share a name but belong to different settings. The entry keeps the father, town and office of the prophet in view. Agreement in spelling is the start of identification, never its whole proof. |
| Jonah | Hebrew | Dove; additional Hitchcock alternatives attributed in the entry | Jonah 1:1-3; 4:1-4; 2 Kings 14:25 | Jonah; Jonas | Son of Amittai links the prophet's references. The familiar dove gloss should not import every later dove association into Jonah's mission. The book gives its own account of flight, anger and mercy. |
| Joshua | Hebrew | Yahweh saves; Jehovah is his help; savior or deliverer | Numbers 13:16; Joshua 1; Zechariah 3 | Joshua; Hoshea; Jehoshua; Jesus in selected KJV references | This explanation distinguishes Moses' successor from the high priest. Some English spellings are quite different, while the context still points to the same bearer. The passage, rather than a spelling alone, has the final identifying role. |
| Solomon | Hebrew | Peaceful; peaceable; other historical glosses attributed | 1 Chronicles 22:7-10; 2 Samuel 12:24-25; 1 Kings 11:1-6 | Solomon; Jedidiah | Chronicles connects the name with peace and rest. Samuel adds a second name for the child. Kings later criticizes the king's conduct. A good name reference leaves room for that tension instead of turning a gloss into praise for every action. |
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How biblical names are compared
The historical entries used here are Hitchcock, Easton and Smith in their named CrossWire editions. Their short glosses are evidence of what those works say. They do not count as a vote by all language scholars. Easton and Smith also include long accounts of people, dates and traditions. An entry can be useful for its name reading without proving every claim in its longer account.
Read a gloss at its own scale. Manly is a name reading. Brother of Simon is a family relation. Fisherman is an occupation in a scene.
Calling a man an apostle concerns his role. These statements may all apply to Andrew, but they answer separate questions. Combining them into a single name meaning would hide the basis for each claim.
A dictionary may give alternatives joined by or. Keep that or. It marks a choice or range within the source.
If one entry offers a prince reading and another uses prevailing language, report the difference. An invented phrase that blends every alternative into one can be less accurate than either original entry.
This matters for Jonah. Dove is a shared reading in two retained works. Hitchcock gives other alternatives. That is grounds for attribution and caution.
It is no grounds for creating a new compound meaning that the works never state. It also does not make a bird sighting a message about a visitor's future.
Identify the bearer before using a biography
A name alone is often too little evidence. Record a father, a town, an office or the other people in the scene. Those details can distinguish a prophet from another man with the same name. They can also connect two passages whose English spellings differ.
Joshua is a useful case. Numbers identifies the son of Nun in a naming statement. Zechariah calls another Joshua the high priest. Those descriptions prevent a merged biography.
The name's help or rescue sense does not tell which man is present. A short search result that shows one life story for the name may miss this distinction.
Jeremiah gives a second case. The opening of the prophet's book supplies his father and location. Chronicles places other bearers among people associated with David. Treating every Jeremiah as the prophet would erase a real difference in setting. The index therefore links a name study that marks the separate references.
Sometimes the name itself changes its range. Jacob receives the name Israel, and Israel later names descendants and a kingdom. A record should track that shift. It should never assume that a person, all descendants and a northern kingdom are identical subjects in every passage. Read what the verse contrasts and whom its verb describes.
Narrative wordplay and dictionary origin
A story can explain a name through a wordplay without giving a complete account of its language history. Genesis describes Jacob holding a heel. Later, Esau makes a complaint about supplanting. Those scenes relate to the name, but the speaker and setting differ. The complaint should stay identified as Esau's speech.
Isaac's story returns to laughter in several scenes. Abraham laughs before the birth. Sarah laughs before it and speaks of laughter afterward. A one-word gloss is useful, yet it cannot show that movement by itself. Reading the actual scenes guards against turning every mention of laughter into the same feeling.
Solomon is linked to peace and rest in Chronicles. That link has direct narrative support. The account of his later conduct in Kings still needs to be read on its own terms. A meaningful name does not certify that its bearer always lived up to it. The text can place an ideal beside a failure.
Aliases and English edition differences
Aliases make a reference easier to search. They are not a claim that every similar-looking name has the same origin. Elijah and Elias, Isaiah and Esaias, Jonah and Jonas are useful cross-edition lookup pairs. Confirm the citation and speaker whenever a pair is used.
The KJV, WEB Classic and ASV panels in each entry keep the source wording visible. Where the editions use different name forms, the difference remains in the quotation. The explanatory prose can identify the relation without silently changing the source. That lets a reader see both the old spelling and the reason for the lookup.
Divine-name spellings also differ. Older dictionaries often use Jehovah. WEB Classic commonly uses Yahweh. A name study can explain the connection in plain English, while preserving each source's actual phrase. Printing one modern spelling over every quotation would make agreement look more exact than the source record warrants.
A modern spelling may have a wider language history than these biblical passages show. Andrey, for instance, belongs to later language use. It can help a visitor recognize a related given name. It cannot establish a surname's genealogy, a family's route of migration or descent from a biblical person. Those questions require their own records.
What a name can and cannot tell you
Names can express hope, confession, memory or a story's wordplay. They can identify a bearer in a list. In these pages, such claims have named evidence. A meaning may be religious without being a personal prediction. It cannot establish a child's future office, character, health or success.
The Elijah entry is a confession about God in its historical readings. It does not assign a prophetic calling to all later Elijahs. Gabriel's gloss concerns God and strength in differing forms. It does not allow an unnamed angel to be identified as Gabriel or establish a rank that a cited verse never gives him.
Avoid choosing a name gloss because it supports a desired moral verdict. Jacob should not become a charge against a present-day child. Solomon should not become a promise of a peaceful life. The evidence describes language and particular texts. A modern naming choice can carry a family hope, provided that hope is not presented as a fact predicted by Scripture.
A short worksheet for a name study
Write the exact spelling and reference first. Copy the identifying phrase beside it. Add the source dictionary's gloss in quotation marks, with its name.
Then state what the passage contributes that the gloss does not. Keeping four small fields is often clearer than writing one blended paragraph.
Next, check an alias in another edition. Record a difference only when it helps identify the bearer or explains the wording. If the editions agree, there is no need to invent a translation dispute. If the dictionaries disagree, name the disagreement without pretending it has been resolved by a majority count.
End with a limit. For a surname question, the limit may be absent family records. For Israel, it may be uncertainty about which group a verse means until its context is read. For a name with several bearers, it may be an unidentified person in a short list. Unknown details should stay unknown.
FAQ
Does every biblical name have one agreed English meaning?
No. The sources can use different glosses, and a narrative can add wordplay. The individual entries attribute those readings rather than merging them into one claimed consensus.
Can a name prove who a person is?
It can help, but a father, office or setting is often needed. Joshua son of Nun and Joshua the high priest are a clear example of why the extra identifier matters.
Are these baby-name predictions?
No. The pages explain source texts and historical glosses. A later bearer does not inherit an office or life story from the name.
Continue this study
Verdict: biblical names with evidence
Use this biblical names reference to move from a spelling to an attributed gloss and a specific bearer. The strongest answer keeps all three within view. For the source editions, rights boundaries and correction process, read the method. For the wider reading routes, return to Bible Meanings.